The hitting of a baseball has often been described as the single most difficult maneuvers in sport. The baseball swing can be broken down into two disciplines: Timing a delivery of the bat to the location of the ball at a precise time and the actual mechanics of that delivery. While the former discipline can be practiced, it is hard to teach in that it requires signals sent from the brain to the parts of the body. In effect, telling those parts when and where to move. The art, though, has many devices that help a batter practice the timing of the swing, the hand-eye coordination. The latter discipline can be taught in that it involves learning to move one's body parts in certain ways.
While there is still disagreement as to the correct mechanics of the perfect swing, most would agree that the maneuver requires the maximum potential available force be extended from the bat to the ball. There are 5 forward movements in the batters motion. Physics tells us that each of these forward movements delivers a certain force to the bat. That the sum of these forces will equal the force delivered to the bat. The optimum swing requires that each of these forward movements delivers its maximum attainable force. The procedure requires the coordinated movement of many parts of the body from head to toe and obtaining the maximum available force from the sum of these movements. To learn these coordinated movements and become proficient in their proper execution requires much practice.
The consensus today for the proper swing technique is to begin with a small step toward the pitcher with the batters front foot while at the same time rotating the back foot 90 degrees causing the hips and torso to rotate. As the torso rotates the batter's arms propel the bat in a downward arc toward the ball. This arc flattens out somewhat in the location of where the ball would be stuck. After the ball is struck the arms continue to propel the bat in an upward arc toward the pitcher. Many devices that try to help batters learn and practice the mechanics of the swing have been added to the art. U.S. Pat. No. 5,642,880 talks of mats and numbers on the ground to help batters with foot placement. U.S. Pat. No. 5,037,094 talks of a disc to help the back foot of a batter rotate, thereby causing the hips and torso to rotate. U.S. Pat. No. 5,029,852 shows a guide that would allow the bat to travel toward the ball in an arc.
All these devices teach a batter to work on particular areas of the body that will deliver the maximum potential available force from that area to the bat. Delivering the maximum potential available force from the bat to the ball requires that all these forces be added together in one coordinated effort. While all the above inventions, and others, show and allow the batter to practice proper techniques, there is no one device in the art that would allow for simultaneous practice of all these movements.
It would therefore be a significant advance of the art to provide one device that teaches a batter all the sequential movements the body has to make in order to deliver the maximum potential available force from the bat to the ball. It would also be a significant advance of the art to provide one device where the above mentioned movements could be practiced in repetition to allow the batter to perfect these moves. It would be a further advance in the art if this device could be used for left hand batters as well as right. And this device could be used to teach and practice the different movements that occur for pitches that are at different locations (I.E. high vs. low, inside vs. outside).